Dec. 21, 2008

I was chatting with some friends last night, trying to explain the scoop on Blu-ray profiles, but I’m not sure I did a terribly good job of it. I've just come across an article at C|Net, though, which does explain Blu-ray profiles pretty well.

(The short answer, though, is that Profile 2.0 is the final one and, if you’re going to buy a Blu-ray player, that’ll be the most future-proof.)

And if you were to get a Blu-ray player, I can also recommend this comparison chart at AVSForum as a good starting point—ostensibly, it’s a table comparing the audio capabilities of various Blu-ray players, but it actually does a good job of summarizing things in general.

In the case of that table, the short answer is that you’d want to get a player with the green-colored cells all the way across its line in the chart. As I write this, and of the players that are currently available, that narrows things down to Panasonic’s DMP BD-55 (the Blu-ray player I have) and Sony’s BDP-S550.

2 Responses to “A Quick Primer on Blu-ray Profiles”

Colin says:

Have you calibrated your TV? My parents just got a 40″ LCD and a Blu-Ray player. I’m trying to find recommendations on Blu-Ray discs they could use for calibrating their TV. If said disc were available on Netflix, that would be a bonus.

Hi Colin! I have had my projector ISF calibrated (by a calibrator guy), but when I had a CRT before, I used Video Essentials and that worked out really well. Indeed, it appears that Netflix does have Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics (the modern HD-equivalent of Video Essentials, the SD-calibration tool I used at the time).

As a word of caution, though, I believe that the retail-box version of Digital Video Esssentials: HD Basics includes a “Tri-Color reference Filter” that one places over one’s screen during portions of the color-based parts of the calibration sequence. (That way, you can test your screen’s colors against known reference colors.) With Netflix, though, my guess is that the filter may not be included in the typical rental—you may get even more out of the calibration if you’re able to buy the disc.